That seems to be a lost art… sadly,

I have to admit to not reading a lot of reviews on the web, and now even fewer in print: generally they’re the opposite of “brilliant, scholarly, impassioned, informed, artful journalism”. Music journalism has certainly changed since say for example

http://jazzstudiesonline.org/?q=node/923

There’s an article of a Sonny Rollins album by Gunther Schuller, where he even transcribes a Rollins solo to make his point. And the recording reviews are all thorough analyses of what is heard. I’m not saying that all music journalists/reviewers should be that highly skilled, but with some of the things that are written, you wonder if they listen to anything at all.

I’m much happier listening to the radio every so often: or seeing what other people are listening to Last.fm, trying it out, then making my own decision about the music. Although **you** obviously call out some hip things too

Happy new year!

But the bit that’s vital to understand here is that blogs are not defacto magazines. They can work as maazines – there are some wonderful impartial, scene-supporting sites that act as a big ole trusted referral hub in the way that NME, Sounds, Jazzwise, The Wire and others have for me over the years, until I outgrew their predilections and could second guess what most of them would say about a particular record.

So your reviews can be valuable, and over time you could build up a reputation as someone who has knowledge, expertise and taste. That’s not the same as pimping other people’s stuff on a blog, just because you’re doing a favour or are to embarrassed to say you think it’s a load of #balls.

As for giving you CDs – CDs cost money to send out! If someone’s sending me a CD for me to review, it hardly seems fair for me to give it away… However, I will suggest that people check out your reviews and make a call about whether they want to send you the CD to check out.

Radio still has a HUGE part to play. It’s still, for mainstream commercially marketed music, the second biggest discovery mechanism after TV. The balanced part of it is understanding that one track played once is unlikely to win you many fans, because not only do they have to like it more than all the rest of the stuff in the show, they have to bother to write down or remember who you were, then type that into Google.

I’ve had more sales from tweets about what I do (mine and other people’s) that I have from YEARS of being played fairly regularly on Late Junction. That’s not a slight on Late Junction at all – it’s an awesome show, and their playing my music has had a very positive impact on my career… and I trust that my music has had a positive impact on their show, but just because they have an audience of tens if not hundreds of thousands, doesn’t mean that it makes it a better way to reach a new or dormant audience.

Radio has done way more for me as a listener than it has as a performer… My life was changed by John Peel, in a way that no single web-agent has ever managed to replicate. Would I have discovered Peel if he’d been an MP3 blogger? Almost certainly not.

There is something really special about the curation of talent and opinion that goes on in big media, be it radio, TV or magazines. Which is why it’s SO infuriating when they piss that away on lowest common denominator horse shit.

My point is NOT that radio and magazines are dead – I REALLY hope they aren’t – but they do need to make their case better, and do what they do well… Despite them quoting me massively out of context in an appallingly written article this month, Word Magazine has a really interesting place in all this, as an exemplar of how to build a web community without putting your magazine online for free. Their website and mag are entirely separate entities, that clearly feed into one another, but which maintains the integrity of the mag, without turning magazine articles into link-bait in order to try and get ad impressions on the site. I so hope it works for them and others long term.

Long live brilliant, scholarly, impassioned, informed, artful journalism.

You are completely right that writing pro-reviews for sleeves demages the integrity of your views.

I regularly write reviews of gigs I go to; there was a post on the LondonJazz blog which questionned the uncritical nature of many reviews, which might chime with your feelings.

By the way, any CDs people send you, you could always pass them my way…! I still buy them – I want the physical backup, and I like handling the physical CD…

Aestheticism is something different by using tool. Time has no value Vs the order of an aesthetic need.

Aesthetic for example may spend 10 H to choose one useles invisibile particular due to an insane paranoia. Its food. Without eating and with out a regular daily until reaching the order needed that never reaching. A persecution, putting on the table both the whole life and future for that
paranoia.

I fear this new internet sensitivity developing. I do admit.

If we doing an esaltation of the visibility, we may have only the most HUGE SHOCKING thing on the top. Because industry get the same ractional. ” no time to investigate = following most variety comments = more accessibile tunes = marketing.sounds grabbing attentions all the costs.

It is a great tool, we are not ready to get the usage I intend. Evereybody not ready, me, you.. ect.
The risk is we’ll have only clever clones. Withour their own earned madness.
Carryng on the cross of a SCI-FI hero. Furthermore acclamated.
Je tiens une plume

Never mind, I absolutely don’t want to start a competition

kisses

the same song we may like it one day, the next day we dislike and the dayafter relike.. so.. If we would necessary want to get PRO-review we just can go for the TECH in a song. Here there is the glitch, tech is the less in a music. But also populism (which mostly look for the junkyes, poor tech and sudden-artificial-huge-plastic-studyed-marketing-sound\structure) is nothing.

Then yess I’m with you. The pro-review on music are junkyes. We can only SHARE our experience, our point of views. But these are useless as well. Unless we are determining specifically the enviroment we listen , the “soul needs” and deep introspective analyzing. (100% impossibile)

We can make 1.000000000000 infinite reviews for the same song.
Cuz our times is the time to barbaric-dynamic-faster learning and shocking. A song is something to get in-depth through time. Something like circolar, not linear. Truly impossibile for me. I force myself to get choice just under pragmatic needs, and I go for the mix aesthetic and “spiritual empaty” as i can. And I’m WRONG. It’s not enough cuz it’s going to be changeable continiusly.

I dislike the simplification-synthesis-minded tech, I hate the extremization of the tech and i hate The pitches limitation due to a mix between high tech and “accessibility”.

Just one thing: Play. I love this term. Play like a child. No way! bububuub

Playing reviews!

Ciao! Great web

What I do think is valuable, but isn’t done enough, is to put the work in historical context. When NME proclaimed “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” one of the “Top Five British albums ever,” I wanted to say, “Seriously? You really believe that? How many albums have you listened to?”

I’m constantly reading blogs that laud some album or band as one of the best of its genre ever. Sometimes I wonder if the reviewer really believes that, is a shill, or doesn’t actually have enough knowledge to be credible. So it’s helpful when the reviewer backs up the claim with a substantial comparison to music that has gone before — and sometimes decades before, if necessary.

What I’ve also noticed, many times over, is that magazine reviews, no matter how lauded the album may be, lead to very little real interest/interaction, whereas a single tweet from a genuine excited fan telling the world about her favourite music can lead to a flurry of sales, interaction, conversation and knock-on sharing.

I’ve long been baffled by the indie artist belief that ‘if only I’d got more reviews, the album would’ve done better’ – it just doesn’t hold up. The value in the reviews I’ve had have been from me going to my audience and saying ‘see, Jazzwise liked it too.’

It’s the same with radio airplay – telling my audience I was played on a credible show will ultimately do more for me than the actual playing did. My audience get excited about the exposure I’m getting, and go and tell their friends, and it’s the trusted recommendation that works…

I think the value in critical reviewing is all in the context, and often in the cumulative effect of the broad spectrum of opinion about how a much-lauded/hyped work of art actually stands up against other works in a similar field, or even by the same artist.

For example, if David Bowie puts out an album, I’m enough of a fan of his best work that I’d be interested to know if other people who have listened to the new stuff consider it to be up there with his better work, or if indeed they consider the new album to be sub-standard within the criteria his own canon sets for him…

I’d then make a judgement call about whether I want to hear it or not.

Bad reviews of brand new works seem to serve no purpose, given that the ‘worst’ that can happen to any piece of art is to be completely ignored. Why say anything? The value of a critical review of something that is being advertised and promoted is perhaps to counter the often hyperbolic claims in the paid-for press/advertising.

But you’ve hit on the crux of the issue – for us a recommenders, there is, as I can see it, no point at all in writing negative stuff about our peers’ work. Being a musician is hard enough without other musicians giving you a hard time. Better to say nothing and spend your time getting excited about the things you really love.